The ASAP's longstanding advocacy of troubled adolescents gains expression in Volume 28 of Adolescent Psychiatry, which focuses on the juvenile justice system and other dimensions of adolescents and the law. A special section on the forensic and legal aspects of adolescent psychiatry traverses the competence of adolescents to consent to treatment; the "voluntary" hospitalization of adolescents; the utility of residential treatment programs in the management of juvenile delinquency; and Richard Ratner's Schonfeld Lecture, "Juvenile Justice?" The special demands on psychiatric providers...

A special section on adolescent substance abuse highlights Volume 29 of Adolescent Psychiatry. Contributions range from an examination of brain myelination in relation to onset of addictive disorders (Bartzokis) to the screening instruments used to detect substance use disorders (Rosner) to practical aspects of psychiatric assessment and management of substance abusing adolescents (Havivi). Topical studies focus on the changing patterns of use and health risks of the "designer drug" Ecstasy (Grob); the club drugs gamma-hydroxybutyrate and ketamine (Miotto et al.); and adolescent...

The period of adolescence can be a time of great creativity, as new intellectual capacities emerge, and as the individual adolescent attempts to make sense out of inner and outer experience. Volume 30 of Adolescent Psychiatry addresses the ways in which adolescent experience is transmuted into creative artistic production, as well as focuses on the relationship between creativity and psychopathology, and treatment for troubled adolescents.

With the links between adolescence and creativity in mind, the volume opens with an in-depth examination of a young boy's...